"Come clean" calls by Labor over Quarantine crash

IT failures at the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) have led to the permanent loss of data with staff left without computer access for almost a week, according to the Labor Opposition.

Calling on the government 'to come clean' about the damage created during a backup of data during the weekend of January 13-14, IT Opposition spokeswoman Senator Kate Lundy said the AQIS1 server crashed resulting in 'catastrophic failure'.

"Data saved on January 12 may have been permanently lost and staff were advised not to save any new data on their computer hard drives; the department must come clean and explain what this failure means for Australia's quarantine services," she said.

A spokesman for Senator Lundy said AQIS is part of the group 8 in the government's IT outsourcing program.

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